saita box lunch & ousunosato

Yesterday, I tried something new.

I bought a bento (boxed lunch) from a convenience store. I usually don't buy my lunch from a convenience store because they mostly have fried foods in their boxed lunches.

This bento was featured in a magazine that I buy twice a month called SAITA.

The bento had (from the top row) vegetable nishime (vegetables boiled in a soy sauce broth), niku dango (a meat dumpling), tamagoyaki (seasoned scrambled egg that is cooked in layers), kinpira (burdock root thinly sliced and cooked with chili pepper & soy sauce), hijiki (a type of seaweed cooked with corn and beans) & kokumai (literally "black rice", the grains are black and when you cook them with some white rice, they turn the white rice a purplish color) mixed with some sweet potato...it was delicious...pretty healthy, huh?

Today for breakfast, we tried an ume (pickled plum) rice mix that I bought from Ousunosato. It was easy, cook 2 cups of rice and stir in the mix!! Yummy!

A couple of years ago while walking along the Gion shopping arcade in Kyoto, I came across a shop, Ousunosato, that sells ume (pickled plum) products. I started with the ume dressing, it is great on daikon (radish) salad.

Since I can't go to Gion all the time, I now order different items from them through the mail. Can you believe that they let you pay the delivery guy when he delivers the items? You don't have to put a down payment or anything!! Very trusting.